


The Fire's Night

by rekishi



Series: Offspring Series [2]
Category: Coldfire - Friedman
Genre: Multi, Post-Canon, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-08
Updated: 2010-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-05 23:52:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rekishi/pseuds/rekishi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Almost a thousand years after the alleged death of the Prophet, there is a new Neocount at Merentha. Almost two decades after the burning of the Forest, Coldfire has returned. And a young woman despairs of her family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fire's Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is the companion piece to "The Obsessed Legend"

Daddy and Uncle Gerald might well be the most stupid people on Erna. Which is somewhat ridiculous, because I am rather sure Uncle Gerald is one of the smartest people on the planet. Gerald Tarrant isn't really my uncle, but he has always treated me like I might be his niece and I grew up calling him that. He's the man my dad is living with. Which explains my earlier sentiment, because two people who so obviously belong together not making anything of it is clearly stupid. I can't even tell if they have ever considered the possibility.

My dad is Damien Kilcannon Vryce, a once-priest of the Church of the One God. These days he runs a school where people, mostly young people, learn the use of weapons. My mother died when I was seven or eight years old of consumption; she believed my father dead on a voyage across the ocean, so I didn't know him until then. My mother's sister tracked him down and delivered me into his care.

Uncle Gerald once was the Prophet of the Church of the One God. That was about a thousand years ago and there is a tale there but it is not mine to tell, sadly. He wasn't human for a long time, a state of being cemented by an atrocious deed, and now he is human again. Dad says he's seeking for redemption, but I'm not sure if he really believes that or if it's a euphemism. As far as I'm concerned, Uncle Gerald is looking for something that he hasn't found yet. He also doesn't like growing older - there is no other reason why he might scowl at the mirror so much - but that seems a secondary concern, for now. He used to be able to Work the fae, and he still can See them, but that's long passed.

Or something. I'm not all that sure about that last part. The same is true for daddy, I'm not sure his days of manipulating that force are over. They are arguing too much about the currents and don't realize that I am long old enough to understand what they're talking about. I might have been raised on the Doctrine of the Church ever since I came to live with them but at least dad has disregarded the large and unlocked library at my disposal. And as Uncle Gerald doesn't tire to point out, originally the Church was not opposed to sorcery, there are a lot of documents lying around. I do have my suspicions that he's leaving them out on purpose.

If anyone from the Church knew Gerald Tarrant still lived they would probably die of apoplexia. Especially if they knew he had been helping to raise a child. But Uncle Gerald has always been kind to me, he has seen to most of my education - I remember him really going pale in those first few days I was there whenever he heard me speak, as I was a brat raised on the docks. I'm happy he did, I don't think dad was quite prepared to take care of a young girl, he probably would have turned me in to a convent and let them raise me. There must have been arguments about the matter, for I remember them glowering at one another, but no yelling; just those silent stares at seemed to say everything.

For a long time I suspected that they both had the occasional tryst but that the only long-term relationship they had was with one-another. Now I know that the only woman my uncle is seeing at all but with a semblance of regularity is dark haired with prominent strands of gray and pale skin. She must have been very beautiful when she was younger and she still has retained some of the beauty. I snuck after Uncle Gerald one time a couple of years ago and saw them together. I asked her name from other patrons of the establishment they had met at after they left; she goes by Narilka Lessing. Today I also know that she is the wife of Neocount Andrys Tarrant, a descendant of Uncle Gerald's. I do not know what this means. Or if my father knows it at all.

Over the years, there has been a lot of emotional tension between my dad and my uncle, often quite palpable. It is confusing, that neither of them will acknowledge a sexual component to their arrangement, for it would ease matters a lot for all of us. The two of them are stubborn fools.

In times when the balance seems close to tipping I leave for Saris and Karril's, who have their own woes with my parents, despite probably being the closest those two self-content men have to friends. These Iezu agree with me that they are meant to be together - although they call it deserving one another and maybe that is justified, considering this display must have gone on for nigh twenty years.

Maybe the quest they have embarked on will do them some good. Perhaps they will finally find one another.

~*~

"How can scorched earth _burn_, Gerald?" It was the first time they actually discussed the matter that had sent them traveling back to what had once been the Forest. When they had heard, when Karril had told them what was happening, they have tacitly agreed to go at once. Nothing more than a meeting of eyes was required any more these days and Damien knew that it should worry him, because technically even that was a token action. The channel between them had lost its strangeness, for the most part at least, but it would never be silent for as long as either of them lived. Damien wasn't too sure what that implied - if his soul was doomed to follow Gerald over all of Erna when something might happen to him that his body didn't survive or nothing but what had already happened back when the Hunter had ceased to be.

Gerald sat his horse brooding for a moment and Damien was glad that despite the wide open connection, there was no such thing as truly reading the other's mind without a proper Working. "Jahanna is a nexus of power, with or without the Forest. That is why it was foolish of the Patriarch to lead his Crusade there, why it was idiocy the first time around with a large army and all humans subconsciously afraid of _something_. The dark fae will always flow back, no matter how often they are burned with real fire. I used the ecosystem to make channeling that power easier."

"And because it provided you with distraction from the slow-breeding horses." The Forest had essentially been Gerald's playground, and if not for the horrors of hunting young women, Damien might even have approved, despite the abominations he had seen there. But that had been Gerald's particular flavor back then, unlife the only kind that would be sustained by those fae.

A look was thrown his way and a wave of disapproval flooded his mind but his companion abstained from an actual comment. "Coldfire can burn without consuming anything, but scorched earth might be a suitable substrate. Before I came to the region such phenomena were not known but even destroyed, the order I imprinted will never fully vanish. Which is what makes it dangerously volatile in truth, some idiot might try to harvest the power. A human mind would burn to a husk at the first contact but the fae might acquire...a taste." He rubbed at the nape of his neck and his black riding glove made the assortment of silver hairs stand out at a stark contrast.

Damien was quietly amused at the fact that even the vain Gerald Tarrant should finally cease plucking out his gray hairs and accede to his advancing age without the fae to keep up appearances. It was a notion that had sparked more than bitter looks already, but even Gerald was eventually forced to agree that appearances were only secondary to more pressing matters.

"Gerald..." Even with all that had happened, the man sometimes forgot that he was as human now as the rest of them.

But he only shook his head. "An Adept's brain is different. As you well know, our perception is not the same and while the dark fae _can_ overwhelm even one such as me, I have sufficient experience to not let that happen."

"You think."

"I _know_. I'm aware of your ignorance towards these matters, Damien, but you also well know the fae are not as unreachable as the Patriarch or even you might have hoped." Which was unfair, because Gerald knew how much Damien often missed touching Erna's life-force, especially since he was still able to see, feel, taste it, now more than ever. But he also was right, it was still possible to Work and many a person had already sacrificed their life for a last impression. And the least of these outcomes were desirable, countering them even more difficult, considering the necessary effort.

No official statistics existed to tally these deaths but Gerald's own, put together over the first three years to serve as risk assessment for himself, and Damien by extension. Nine out of ten Workings done for altruistic or superficially altruistic reasons left the sorcerer alive. Nine out of ten Workings done for selfish purposes killed the one attempting them and only few of those managed to complete their goal. Most of those who survived these attempts were Adepts, but it wasn't a general rule. An Adept might perish from an attempt at Working just as much as a regular person.

But they had never looked at the age or power of those Adepts who had survived or died.

Maybe Gerald had a point regarding differently structured brain patterns of Adepts.

The man's eyes were narrowing now, as he a tried to take the measure of the riders now coming towards them. Spending his life with someone he shared such an intimate bond with had proven unexpectedly taxing for Damien. He had known from the moment if its completion that the bond would have side effects he hadn't counted on; he had not, however, considered the fact how much truly would be shared between the both of them.

Damien had never made a big deal of sex. He had taken up the opportunity when it was offered, had never required many skills of coercion and had certainly never paid for it; then again, while he had never been one to abstain, he had always known when it was simply wasn't proper. But when you lived your life sharing perception and emotion and essentially everything else that made your mind into yours alone with someone in constant rapport, carnal pleasures could just as easily become a thing of embarrassment and confusion.

"You ready?" Gerald murmured, obviously feeling uneasy about the oncoming group.

Damien eyed them closer himself. Five men, all looking like they lived rough. "Always. You should know," he answered just as quietly. They both knew the other wasn't quite as calm as he pretended. Their life was one of compromises.

Gerald chose that moment to leer at him and that certainly left Damien feeling as uncomfortable as it always did. "Just making sure."

Quite possibly, it was finally time to get a little revenge. At the same time it served as a distraction, for while Damien couldn't quite judge the fae currents around Gerald - a curiously blind spot in his fae-enhanced perception, as if the Adept's brain didn't quite know what to make of the body it resided in - he knew there were still ripples reaching out to the strangers on the road. While the forces weren't affected by human thought any longer, impressions were still made on the fae and they would still reach others; a simple model of predator and prey, offender and victim. Natural on Erna, yet wholly unnatural for humans still.

"I know about Narilka." A simple statement, yet it spawned a multitude of futilely suppressed emotions surging through the channel, none of which Damien could give a definitive name to.

But when the answer came, it was calm and controlled. "So you do."

"All of them, Gerald?"

A shake of head. "I don't know. I can't know. They can't know."

Andrys had retreated behind the walls of the Tarrant family seat only few years after he claimed the title of Neocount. Rumors were abound that he had contracted a venereal disease prior to his marriage and was now suffering its dire consequences due to the lack of fae-supported Healing. The only person still representing the House of Tarrant had been Narilka and only on the most most important occasions. Those rumors were discounted by most people, since Andrys and Narilka had five children and the Neocountess was in obvious good health.

But Damien was aware of one more male, living member of the Tarrant family. And he knew that Narilka had taken to consort with Gerald, albeit her seeking him out had become rarer over the years. Damien was spared most of the details, his companion usually being more successful at keeping specifics from leaking through the channel.

"I understand. Which-"

"Does not mean you approve. I know, Vryce. Now shut up and ready your pistol."

~*~

I think it galls Uncle Gerald that he will die and his name will be lost to mankind. Daddy doesn't seem overly concerned. That might be what is truly separating one from the other, Uncle Gerald's desire to leave his mark on the planet and dad's only goal to live out his life so he won't have regrets.

They are two very complicated men. With an even more complicated history binding them.

Yet there is no doubt that they each would give their life for the other. This very fact does hold its own implications and problems, because while the way they have been living since I came to them does not indicate it, they are not the kind of people who will find a peaceful end. And I am troubled to imagine one of them living on without the other; a form of codependency anchored as much in their bodies as in their souls.

If they were different men, their scarce travel gear might worry me.

If they were different men, I would not now be readying my own travels to look for my paternal siblings in the Western Autarchy. I have been in contact with the Matriarch there, in office only recently, and it looks like she was an acolyte at the same time as dad, so she remembers him quite well.

Of course, even with an established path across the Dividers such a journey still harbors plenty of dangers. However, I learned how to prepare from two adventurers and I also have conducted extensive research on how to ensure the safety of our belongings. If neither of us will return, our combined inheritance (papers, money and property) along with detailed information on identity and purpose will be entrusted to the oldest son of Andrys Tarrant, a boy of now 15 and the closest to my uncle's genius that anyone has come in the past five hundred years.

I plan to return, though, and say a few choice words to dad, depending on the extensiveness of my family.

-Fin-

 


End file.
